Miller agrees to testify - so soon!

New York Times reporter Judith Miller was released from jail late yesterday and is scheduled to testify this morning before a federal grand jury investigating whether any government officials illegally leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media, according to lawyers involved in the case.

Miller, 57, has been jailed for contempt of court since July 6 for refusing to testify about conversations with news sources. She was released from the Alexandria Detention Center shortly after 4 p.m. yesterday after her attorney Robert S. Bennett reached an agreement on her testimony with special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, according to two lawyers familiar with the case.

Miller had refused to testify about information she received from confidential sources. But she said she changed her mind after I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Cheney, assured her in a telephone call last week that a waiver he gave prosecutors authorizing them to question reporters about their conversations with him was not coerced.

There’s one thing about this that had always puzzled me. Why didn’t Scooter Libby ever just call her up to assure her that his waiver of confidentiality was voluntary. Here the poor thing’s been in the slammer for months now, and all because the guy wouldn’t call her up and say it would be OK to talk. Why didn’t they just have that conversation? Did he not want her to talk? Was he hiding behind her? Or is it something else?

Apparently, lawyers for both Libby and Miller confirmed that their clients wouldn’t be accused of obstruction of justice, before allowing the conversation to take place.

Tate said that he and Bennett then asked Fitzgerald whether their clients could talk without fear of being accused of obstructing the investigation, and were assured that Fitzgerald would not oppose them doing so. After the phone call from Libby on Sept. 19 or 20, Tate said, the lawyers wrote a letter to Fitzgerald indicating Miller accepted Libby's representation that the waiver was voluntary.

That might explain why that conversation waited so long to happen. Even after LIbby's lawyers told Millers lawyers that Libby's waiver was given voluntarily, Miller still demanded to hear it directly from Libby. Gee. How sad she had to spend time behind bars and isn’t it wonderful she’s free now? Or not. How about, how clever that she could refuse to testify without personal assurances given directly by someone who was barred from giving them to her? How about, how inconvenient that her is cover now blown? I wonder if that’s what they’re thinking at the Times.

It was Bennett, Miller’s lawyer, who called Tate, Libby’s lawyer to initiate this conversation – not the other way around. Why now? Was it the threat of criminal contempt, which looms larger as the grand jury closing date looms nearer? Then there’s this wrinkle. Miller and Fitzgerald have tangled before.

The case began in late 2001, when federal agents were investigating two Islamic foundations for alleged ties to terrorists. On Dec. 3, 2001, Times reporter Judith Miller telephoned officials with the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Texas-based charity accused of being a front for Palestinian terrorists, and asked for a comment about what she said was the government's probable crackdown on the group.

U.S. officials said this conversation and Miller's article on the subject in the Times on Dec. 4 increased the likelihood that the foundation destroyed or hid records before a hastily organized raid by agents that day.

Part of Miller’s deal to testify in the Plame case is the assurance from Fitzgerald that questions to her will be strictly limited to the conversations she had with Libby. I wonder what things might otherwise come up.

And as to why she has suddenly agreed to testify now, when Libby's lawyers told her lawyers that the waiver was voluntary a year ago? I have to admit I just don't know. But then, as Tom Maguiresuggests, “Maybe a month as First Amendment hero was plenty.”